Monday, March 31, 2014

The ACA is a Neoliberal Wet Dream

There is no doubt whatsoever the whole point of the "Affordable Care Act" is to do to company-sponsored health insurance what loopholes in ERISA did to defined benefit pensions.

Obama is one rotten son of a bitch. His education policies are horrible enough, but now he is giving corporate America the right to steal and kill people by forcing them into unaffordable "health care" exchanges and in effect rationing health care for all but the richest among us.

Perhaps the most insidious component of the legislation is its impact on health care delivery in the not-so-distant future. In his new book, Reinventing American Health Care, Ezekiel J. Emanuel outlines how the ACA lays the groundwork for the virtual elimination of employer-sponsored health insurance in America over the next decade.

Emanuel is a close ally of President Barack Obama, having served from January 2009 to January 2011 as a special adviser on health care reform to the White House. As we wrote in 2009, “An examination of Emanuel’s vision of health care restructuring reveals that Obama’s proposals have been informed by many of its guiding principles. Key among them are the defense of a health system based on private profit and the delivery of class-based, rationed medical care for the majority of Americans.”

In a section near the end of his book, titled “The End of Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance,” Emanuel explains that before Obamacare, some 150 million people—close to half of the US population—received their health insurance through their employer or a relative’s employer. This was despite the fact that no “employer mandate” existed requiring businesses to do so.

“The ACA changes all of that,” Emanuel writes approvingly. He states categorically: “By 2025 few private-sector employers will still be providing health insurance.” He predicts that traditional employer-sponsored coverage will be replaced by a combination of defined contributions to employees to purchase coverage on private exchanges, basically vouchers, or the elimination of insurance coverage altogether.

Tell me there is a fucking difference between the two political parties now.

And that last name. Just WHO is "Zeke" Emanuel related to?

You guess it: the corrupt mayor of Chicago and former Obama White House official Rahm Emanuel. They are brothers.